"Alpha in Her Blood," Remus/Tonks, PG-13
Title: Alpha in Her Blood
Author: kethlenda
Characters/Pairing: Remus/Tonks
Summary:
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): some blood
Originally Written: 9/05
Notes: Written for the Imitation Challenge at hp_literotica; the writer whose style I chose to emulate was Angela Carter. Beta by sionnain.


The wolf and I were wed in August. The day was as blue as heaven and as hot as hell. Our friends all turned out, wept. For who knows how long our idyll will be? This is not the same world we knew before; our Eden is burned, our innocence gone.

He will not sleep in our bed tonight. Once a month, he leaves my side, leaves me to lie alone beneath the piled-high quilts, smelling the scent of him on his pillow. On the table beside the bed sit the twin moons of his reading glasses, perched atop a dusty leatherbound book. Next to these, a mug, sticky with last night’s hot chocolate. His tweed jacket is casually flung over the chair—a wolf in sheep’s clothing indeed. You might think he has only stepped out for a smoke, a trip to the loo.

But I can hear him howling. The sound carries on the wind from the ruined house on the hill, carries across the empty streets of Hogsmeade, penetrates the wavy glass of our bedroom window, and I know he is given over, tonight, to his restless beastly nature.

There was a potion, a foul-tasting concoction that served to tame him during these monthly indispositions. But the only man who could safely brew it has turned Judas, and fled from us.

It is a different brew that I will stir tonight.

It is not easy, nowadays, to find an apothecary open past sunset. Once, Hogsmeade glowed at night from a hundred welcoming windows. Golden is how I remember Hogsmeade nights—candlelight and butterbeer and the pale silver-gilt face of the moon.

The shops are closed now. Even the ones that have bravely stayed in business lock the doors at night. The streets are dark, the windows shuttered, as though a few thin slats of wood will keep out the forces of darkness. But Fortune smiled, and I was able to find one, just one, where the proprietor had not yet drawn the shades. I hurry home, now, with my bundle of herbs and powders and elixirs.

The air smells like fall. Woodsmoke, and dust from the dying leaves that crunch beneath my feet. A chill in the air. The howling goes on. He sounds like he’s mourning, and he has reason to mourn.

I light a fire, start the cauldron to bubbling. I shiver, thinking of the feat I am attempting. It is the only way. This is beyond my modest ability to transmute flesh and hair and bone.

And there is no room for error. If I fail—-if I fail, tomorrow morning he will come to his wits among a pile of broken and bloody bones, with maybe a tuft of mousy-brown hair amid the remains of the feast, one grisly Ariadne’s thread to lead him to the inevitable conclusion that he has devoured his bride.

It would destroy him utterly, this I know.

So I stirred and stirred, simmered and stewed, oh so carefully, oh so gingerly. The potion looked just as Moste Potente Potions told me it would at this stage. There was only one more ingredient, then. One ingredient I could not buy at the apothecary’s shop.

It is something of mine that I add to the mixture now, one red ribbon twisting and writhing through the soup, a ribbon to bind me for this one night to the moon, as he is bound for all time.

The red dissolved, then, and the entire potion turned to liquid moonlight. It looked like quicksilver, deadly poison. I ladled some into a glass and took a deep breath. Was it my husband I courted tonight, or death?

I drink it down. I run through the dark streets. Time is of the essence. I must get to the house before I lose my wits; I will need to have my mind sharp to avoid trouble along the way and to break into the house. But if I arrive too early, I will face him as I am, defenseless, prey.

My two feet crunch again in the leaves. An owl cries out a hooting hallo to his mate; something rustles in the underbrush, and I dare not look more closely. The wolf still howls. The moon looks down on both of us, her wayward children; her face is impassive.

The door is locked. He must have locked it behind himself while he still could do it. I whisper Alohomora; the door creaks open on ancient hinges.

My feet—-still two—-make a horrible crunch upon the floor.

Lumos.

The room is a right mess, even by my standards. Wallpaper hangs in clawed strips from the walls; furniture lies broken on its side. There—-a mirror, dashed to the floor in God knows what rage, its silvery shards littered on the floor with the—-

With the bones. God, the floor is littered with bones. I know that they are animal bones, that he has to eat something on full moon nights, but the potion has not yet worked its magic, and I hear a four-footed tread on the stairs, descending toward me. I see myself, my bones and sinews and flesh, scattered among these artifacts.

The wolf enters the room. He stands before me, all greying fur and glowing amber eyes, and massive, slavering jaws.

Why, husband, what big teeth you have.

He pants, stares. I cannot read his expression. Does he know me, when he is in this state?

It was at that moment that the potion took effect. My body was wracked with pain; I fell to all fours, saw my hands shrink into paws, felt the fur burst from my skin. I stretched, shook myself, surrendered wholly to this new form. I threw my head back, and howled, which seemed the only natural thing to do, the only way to sing this agony to the heavens, the only way to cry this joy to the moon.

He answered with a wave of his tail, with a nod of his grey-muzzled head.

I toss my own head, gesturing in the direction of the open door. The night awaits. The moon calls. And we run, my husband and I, my mate and I, into the wild autumn air.